I've been creating a list of books that I've been running into here in Europe that I want to read / get from the library. While I know Davis is an enormous library, since UNC isn't particularly strong in computer science books (which is what I generally look for), I haven't thought amazingly highly of UNC's library. However, the books I've been completely randomly running into here have an extremely high chance of being found in the UNC library, and I'm extremely impressed. I thought I would post up a list of the ones I have so far (I find the book, add it to the built-in list functionality of the new search engine, then email the list to myself), in case others were interested in what I've been thinking about reading.

• The Breaking and Remaking of the Portland Vase—the story of one particular vase in the British Museum which was related in brief by my tour guide and sounded very interesting. Apparently it's a short story as the book is only 32pages (which I didn't notice until now. But we have a copy of an obscure pamphlet about a vase in the Art Library!


• Advertising Next—a coffee-book style book on successful and interesting advertising campaigns which seemed like a neat book to take a look at (saw in the Victoria & Albert bookshop).


• Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)—I've seen notes about this book for ages from my economics blogs, and decided it's definitely worth taking a look, especially after spending some time in a car in European traffic.


• Why we buy : the science of shopping, one of the three books on this list from Don't Make Me Think's recommended reading list, which was itself read because it was on Jeff Atwood's recommended reading list, which sounds like a very interesting book on how consumers make purchasing decisions (in retail stores).


• Sources of Power : How People Make Decisions, the second item from the reading list; a book that describes how decisions are actually made by those who have to make them quickly, not how in ideal a decision should be made, which in a sense is similar to a portion of the usability book ("how people actually use your website vs. how you think they use it").


• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: 3rd Edition, the third item from the reading list. A reference book on how to design websites which sounds both interesting and not necessarily as light reading as the others. However, it's on reference at SILS, so I can't check (this edition) out.


• The fall of the Bell system : a study in prices and politics. I was reading up on AT&T today. I probably started with some mention of cell-phones, then started digging a bit more into the history of AT&T (via Wikipedia, what else?) and doing my perodic checking-of-AT&Ts-website-to-see-if-they've-lowered-prices. Generally, they create new plans with the same features as the old ones but lower prices or flat out lower the plan's price, but if you're a current user of the plan you don't get moved to the lower price (a method of price discrimination). I switched my family's local phone service from "2Pack" to "CompleteChoice Basic" and we'll now save $2 a month with no service change. Well, this book is one of the books recommended in a biography on the judge who broke up AT&T (into the Baby Bells, which eventually merged back together to get the new AT&T).


• The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T —Another book. Very much out of print but with very good ratings on Amazon, and fortunately very available in Davis.

Oh, while I'm speaking of books, The Name of the Wind and Don't Make Me Think are two damn good books. Ben and I can choose good books (we're doing a loose book club this summer and these are the two we've read so far).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, France, Amsterdam, research, my life, yeah, stuff I should be blogging about. But you get my book list first. :D